Socratic Method as a participatory public health research method: Examples from the Family-Nurse Care Coordination Partnership

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has emerged as an important approach to enhance the relevance, quality, and use of research data by increasing the likelihood of overcoming distrust of research by communities that have traditionally been only the "subjects". CBPR poses challenges for communities since the participatory approach often involves diverse stakeholders who do not share the same foundational knowledge and may have to cross borders, or cultural divides, to reach consensus. Despite its challenges, the time and effort of coming to consensus and sharing the research process with all members of the team offers a means to reduce the gap between theory, research, and practice. The Family-Nurse Care Coordination Partnership (FNCCP), partnered parents of children and youth with special healthcare needs (CYSHCN), the Title-V nurses and administrators who coordinate their care, CYSHCN community advocates, and university researchers to build and evaluate an intervention to improve care coordination services for CYSHCN. The FNCCP used the Socratic Method, an innovative structured method for deriving local theory or implicit “practice wisdom” to: 1) establish a reciprocal learning process; 2) articulate ambiguous theoretical concepts; and 3) build empathy and collegiality among diverse partners. Nurses and parents gave examples in “story” form that illustrated key concepts, such as partnering, gate-keeping, compliance, care coordination, and family-centered care. These narratives were deconstructed through group process to inform the intervention and strengthen our partnership. We describe the process of applying the Socratic Method in CBPR work and discuss the utility of this application with illustrations from the FNCCP.